The Affordable Napa: Healdsburg

My girlfriend and I spent this past weekend in Healdsburg, California, a little town in the wine country about an hour north of San Francisco.  It’s about the same distance from home as Napa, California which is what most folk think of when they hear "wine country" in Northern California. Because of that, Napa is now very crowded and very expensive   and hardly the place you’d go for a relaxing weekend. So we opted for its country cousin, one of a number of valleys of grapes and vineyards in this part of the world.

It was lovely. Beautiful scenery, great food, no crowds and wine wine wine if that’s your sort of thing. It’s not exactly mine (my girlfriend, Bay Area born and raised, grew up with the purple stuff) so I typically join her in winery tasting rooms to eat the oyster crackers, read a paperback book and drive us both home. Or in our case, the wonderful Madrona Manor hotel which housed us for a few days.

What follows is a short list of things to do on a weekend in Healdsburg, all highly recommended based on our experience. If the category headings speak to you, then you seek the same in a vacation as us.

Eatin’:

• Cyrus is the ultimate dining in Healdsburg for a way-expensive (see for yourself) special occasion kinda dinner. It was a bit rich for our blood so we settled for an 11$ cocktail (plenty of non-alcoholic goodies for the tea tottalers as well) and dinner at the Madrona Manor Restaurant, just as good, just as special, half the price.

• The Russian River Pub is a total locals joint, a log cabin in the middle of nowhere with great burgers, pool table and not a tourist in sight. We first saw it on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. Host Guy Fieri lives in the area.

• We also took in Fieri’s restaurant Johnny Garlics in Santa Rosa which I’ll call "TGI Fridays if a real chef was in the kitchen." Mostly tasty fun food but surprisingly good despite the cornier-than-Iowa atmosphere.

Littler Eatin’:

• Cafe Newstand in downtown Healdburg serves a mean iced coffee.

• Snowbunny Fozen Yogurt, just across the town’s central plaza serves some great desserts. We went twice.

• We didn’t get anything there but Powell’s Sweet Shoppe (part of west coast chain apparently. Bah) is candy and sweettooth wonderland. You can even have a kid’s birthday there.

Drinkin’:

We went to three wineries we both liked very much…

• Everett Ridge: A real friendly joint, with a bit of sass. One of their wines is called "Diablita" and they have devil horns scattered about the tasting room. There’s a photo somewhere of me wearing said horns.

• Lambert Ridge was a bit pricier and more formal: dark woods, recessed lighting, a bar probably carved by artisans imported from abroad. It could have been tasting room where a mid level mafia capo had been wacked. But the staff was very nice. The tasting room also had an enormous Hansel and Gretel fireplace with a ledge I said on and read my book.

• Korbel Winery (famous for their champagne) was more of a production, with train tours of the wine country leaving from their front door on the hour and a lot of dudes in khaki shorts and black socks. But they’ve got a full marketplace where we had a lovely lunch and the grounds were pretty enough to walk around and breathe a few snootfulls of air in. And out.

Walkin’:

• If you’re in this part of the world, do not miss the Armstrong Redwoods Grove, an absolutely majestic collection of Redwood Trees, the largest organisms on planet earth. The oldest in this grove are over 1400 years old, an idea which just blows me away.

        We spent a calm, thoughtful morning there, just looking at these huge things, chatting some but   mostly being very quiet in their mighty shadows.

        It was that kind of weekend. And great for both of us because of it.

• Category: On the road...